Unlike France and England, Germany never became a unified nation in the Middle Ages. It was so large, had unclear boundaries, and included large states that were powers in their own right, like Bavaria, Saxony, Swabia and Prussia. When Napoleon defeated all these states in the early 1800s, the struggle to throw him out saw the development of strong nationalist feelings. At the time the idea of uniting all German speakers quickly gained currency, although conservatives, in power in most of the states, vetoed unification because their primary loyalty was to their own territory.

Then in 1848 the year of European revolution forced the pace, nearly leading to unification – were it not for an argument over who would be head of state. Wanting to follow Britain’s example of a stable constitutional monarchy, delegates offered the position to King Friedrich-Wilhelm IV of Prussia, given that Prussia accounted for 60 percent of the proposed nation’s population. But the latter indignantly refused. He was king of Prussia by divine process, and would not grubby his name by association with this new project!

After that, the whole project lost momentum – temporarily at least. At the time, Prussia was an economic giant with huge coal and iron reserves, large enough and wealthy enough to thrive as an independent nation-state. Its people put Prussian nationalism before German nationalism, though its liberals liked the idea of unification. It was an ambivalence personified in the figure of Otto van Bismarck, who became Prussian Chancellor in 1862.

Under Bismarck, Prussia won three wars in rapid succession: against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870/71. These victories paved the way for German unification, because although Bismarck’s heart was Prussian, he found himself calculating that Prussia’s interests might actually be better served in a bigger, unified Germany.

In a display of determined statesmanship, backed up with military force, he made unification a reality. Prussian liberals who scorned nationalism lauded him for making a united Germany a reality, and Prussian traditionalists were satisfied that their state played the leading role in the new nation.

Meanwhile the 1870 war with France made the smaller German states – fearful that France would occupy them again like in Napoleon’s time – rally around Prussia and defeat their old enemy together.

Eventually, unification was marked by a ceremony at Versailles in January 1871. And Prussia’s new ruler, Wilhelm I, who had succeeded the obdurate Friedrich-Wilhelm, agreed to become Emperor of the new Deutsches Reich.

This is adapted from Andrew’s e-book Germany, Just-Enough History©, available on Apple, Amazon, Google and Kobo (£7.99, €9.99, $9.99).

Ingolstadt is a pleasant city on the banks of the Danube, half way between the big city tourist destinations of Munich and Nuremburg. Despite its riverside location it attracts far fewer visitors than its neighbours, or indeed some of the similarly sized but much more architecturally significant Bavarian cities such as Würzburg or Augsburg.

Admittedly its location isn’t on the most scenic stretch of the river, unlike Regensburg or even Passau, but Ingolstadt has three big claims to fame that should ensure its lasting legacy.

First it is the home of Audi, the third of the famous car marques that call southern Germany home. Less well known than the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart or BMW Welt in Munich, Audi has its own visitor centre at the Group HQ in Ingolstadt, the Audi Forum, which attracts 400,000 visitors a year. It offers both tours of its production facilities and there is the Audi Museum Mobile, charting the development of the company and its cars.

Unlike its competitors, the presence of the firm in Bavaria is something of an accident, a legacy of the historical settlement that concluded World War II. Before the war, Auto Union had its headquarters in the Soviet zone, but following the expropriation of the company’s plants in occupied Chemnitz and Zwickau by the authorities, the newly-named Audi relocated to Ingolstadt and has been there ever since.

The importance of Audi to the local economy cannot be overstated. It employs over 40,000 people and either directly (or through its supplier network) accounts for over 50 percent of regional output. Ingolstadt now has a third railway station, Ingolstadt Audi, a €15m joint project with Audi and Deutsche Bahn, which allows 3,000 daily commuters to get to their place of work more conveniently.

Frankenstein’s monster

Ingolstadt’s second big claim to fame is its lasting place in the pantheon of horror fiction as the literal birthplace of Frankenstein’s Monster. Touring southern Germany in 1818, Mary Shelley decided to use the University of Ingolstadt, and its well known scientific research centre, as the setting for the young scientist Viktor Frankenstein’s decision to create a new animate creature.

The city operates a Frankenstein tour through the Altstadt, calling at locations which feature in the original novel, and makes good use of its setting as the location of one of the most enduring stories in European fiction.

Finally, Bavaria is synonymous with beer, and the first ever laws governing food safety, in this case regarding the ingredients that were permitted in the brewing of beer. Duke William IV proclaimed, in Ingolstadt in 1516, that beer could only be brewed with barley, hops and water. Initially this was the Bavarian Purity Law but it soon came to apply to the whole of the country.

Despite some tinkering to allow for brewing with wheat etc, those essential three ingredients remain at the core of the German beer industry, and brewers still proudly state that their beers adhere to the Reinheitsgebot of 1516.

So instead of passing through Ingolstadt en route to Munich from Nuremburg, it’s worth stopping off to consider the lasting effects that the city has had on European industry and culture.  – Mark Arrol

Halfway between Frankfurt and Nuremberg lies the beautiful city of Würzburg, only just inside Bavaria, but anything but Bavarian in character. Ruled for centuries by its wealthy and influential prince-bishops, it was only subsumed into Bavaria during the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s.

Those prince-bishops bequeathed the city its two top-drawer attractions. On the hills on the left bank of the river Main lies the Festung Marienberg, a medieval castle complex designed to provoke awe among the residents of the area. However once it had outlived its usefulness 300 years ago, the decision was made to build a palace in the city itself. The stunning Residenz, one of the most important buildings in Germany, and listed by UNESCO as a world heritage site, is the result. It took 60 years to build and is regarded as one of the finest baroque palaces in Europe.

For a city to have one such attraction is impressive, to have two is remarkable. But what makes it all the more astonishing is that only three weeks after the infamous air raids on Dresden and only six weeks before the end of the World War II an even greater level of devastation was wreaked on Würzburg. The Allied bombardment here is far less well-known, but had the effect of destroying 90 percent of the city. After the war the initial thought was to leave the ruins as a sort of memorial, but then it was decided to rebuild the main sites exactly as they had been, a painstaking task which took almost 40 years to complete.

Stunning architecture aside, one of Würzburg’s biggest contributions to modern life was the discovery of X-rays by William Röntgen at his laboratory in the city in 1895, an achievement for which he was granted the first Nobel Prize for Physics. Today there’s still a lot of study going on at the University of Würzburg (founded in 1582), which contributes a quarter of the city’s population, giving it a very young and vibrant atmosphere.

Finally, and once more in contrast to other Bavarian cities famed for the production (and consumption) of beer, the drink of choice in Würzburg is wine (although for those still keen on the usual the Distelhäuser in Sternbäck bierkeller is a wonderfully fresh beer). Winemaking has been going in the area since the Middle Ages and the banks of the Main are covered with vines. The locals are rightly proud of their renowned produce and sipping a Silvaner on the Alte Mainbrucke, looking up at the Festung Marienberg is one of the must-dos of any stay.

On 14 June 1985 the first signatures were put to the Schengen Agreement on the gradual abolition of checks at common borders, to allow total freedom of travel in most EU countries.  But this June’s G7 Summit in Bavaria, however, highlighted quite what we are missing by not having such checks in place.

For the most part, Schengen seems to work fine. We drive through Europe on holiday and where there used to be long queues in the summer our kids don’t even notice that they have entered a different country. Sometimes, only the changed road surfaces or traffic signs give the game away.

In preparation for the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau, however, Germany decided to partially rescind the 30-year-old Schengen Agreement at certain key crossings, hoping to intercept potentially radical protesters from elsewhere in Europe.

Temporary police booths were set up at land borders, especially with Austria, to allow for increased checks of cars, buses and pedestrians. Train passengers were also more frequently subjected to checks.

Whilst the controls did the trick and no illegal protesters managed to get anywhere near the secluded hideaway of the G7 leaders, the checks also produced other unexpected results: preliminary reports show that there were over 3,500 arrests, more than 1,000 captures of wanted criminals, 5,000 searches, 237 drugs offences and 10,555 infringements of the law of residency in just a few days.

Jörg Radek, Chairman of the Police Trade Union (GdP), claimed that the number of people detected was twice as high as what would typically be found across all of Germany over the same period.

Politicians from Bavaria and Saxony, the two German states most affected by border crime, are now petitioning for stricter passport controls at all times.

They have a point, don’t they?

I’ve just been out to Bavaria to check out the hotel – Schloss Elmau – where the G7 is having its big annual Summit over the 7-8^th June 2015. And a truly lovely place it is, too, with all imaginable top-end luxuries in a spectacularly pastoral setting in a valley of its own, surrounded by mountains.

The likes of Barack and Angela should feel well looked after in the very short time that they have here, because the hotel has a staggering array of restaurants – seven – and spas – four – for its 162 rooms. I’ve done a detailed report on the place which will appear in due course in the travel section of the Financial Times.

There is already a huge security presence sweeping the valley. We were stopped in our car by a man with a gun in his waistband, who didn’t want to know anything about us, but just kept us stationary for a couple of minutes whilst something else was going on, somewhere else.

Black saloons came and went from the front of the hotel, and CIA operatives have been attending the hotel’s morning yoga classes. A rumoured 17,000 police have apparently been assigned to the task of keeping everything safe, which is more than were on duty for the London Olympics. The locals are, of course, grumbling about the costs, plus the potential closures to their roads and railways.

What the G7 leaders won’t have time to do is explore the surrounding area, which is a shame. Some two hours hiking directly up the hill from Elmau is Schachen, the extraordinary mountain lodge built by ‘Mad’ King Ludwig II, with its pseudo Turkish interiors. One of Ludwig’s even more extraordinary palaces, Linderhof, is a hop and a skip away.

Elmau is in a deeply traditional and very Catholic neck of the woods, with the huge baroque monastery of Ettal and the quiet town of Oberammergau – scene of a huge Passion Play every ten years – within a half-hour’s drive.

The resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen lies 18km to the west, with the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, towering over it. The Zugspitze has a cog-wheel train and cable car to the top plus a glacier which the Germans cover with plastic in the summer to stop it melting. All very organised.

We were lucky enough to have an Alpenhorn lesson with Elizabeth Heilmann up on the Zugspitze’s peak, which certainly attracted the crowds.  Regrettably, however, this is not something the G7 will have a chance to do, although they’ll no doubt be making lots of noise of their own.

Otherwise, they’ll just whizz in, and whizz out again, 24 hours later. Maybe they’ll see enough of the region to make them want to come back again some other time.

It’s been another good year for German tourism. Figures to June show a rise in British visitors of 7.5 percent over 2012, and while a good proportion of that is undoubtedly due to the upturn in business travel and the European economy, 55 percent is still leisure travel, particularly city breaks (Berlin accounts for a whopping 22 percent of all overnight stays). Looking back further, the number of British overnights in Germany has increased by a massive 30 percent in the decade since 2003, whilst the likes of France and Spain have been largely static over the same period.

The numbers break down as follows: The most popular city is Berlin, with more than twice as many overnights (1,002,175) as the secondmost popular, Munich. After Munich comes Frankfurt and then Hamburg. Berlin also counts as the most popular federal state, with Bavaria hard on its heels, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (Dusseldorf, Cologne and the Ruhr) and then by Hesse (Frankfurt and part of the Rhine valley). Germany also tops the worldwide league table when it comes to culture-related trips (ie classical concerts, opera festivals etc).

So why are British visitors picking up on Germany? The German tourist board ascribe some of the increase to the positive publicity emerging from the 2006 World Cup, staged in Germany. Positive leadership during the economic crisis has clearly helped, and Germany surprised everyone by emerging top in a ‘most popular country’ survey done by the BBC this year. Good air links have played their part, as have hotel prices which are considerably better value than elsewhere in Europe. For example the most expensive city in Germany, Munich, has an average price of €123, compared to the average in Paris of €256. And finally a small part of it has to be down to increased awareness of the range and diversity of what Germany has on offer, and a tiny part of the credit for that is due to websites like this one.

Next year’s themes the tourist board will be promoting are: 25 years since the Fall of the Wall (yes, it really is 25 years!), all the German UNESCO World Heritage sites, a big barrier-free travel initiative, and a celebration of 300 years since the first of the House of Hanover acceded to the British throne (being marked with the launch of the new Royal Heritage Route and website http://www.germany.travel/en/ms/royal-heritage/start/royal-heritage.html)

Onwards and upwards!

Summer brings the promise of holidays, and many of Germany’s tourism hotspots are gearing up for the seasonal crowds. But one of the biggest attractions – Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria – has been preparing for summer 2013 for longer than most.

On and off since 2009, the fairytale form of Neuschwanstein has been cloaked in scaffolding for exterior repairs. However, just in time for summer 2013, the castle is shedding its skin. Thanks to the completion of an extensive renovation programme, the 6,000 tourists who visit during each day in August will have the chance to take an unobscured photo of King Ludwig’s ‘fantasy in stone’.

Neuschwanstein Castle was built in the 1870s, and was never designed to accommodate vast crowds – hence the importance of the present-day works. Indeed, the castle was intended to be a private refuge for introverted King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Neuschwanstein’s whimsical turrets were devised by theatre-set designers – a mock-Medieval fortress for a day-dreamer of a monarch.

‘Mad’ King Ludwig was one of the last of the Wittelsbach dynasty to rule Bavaria, and a truly private soul. Haunted by problems in his personal and political life, the eccentric King channelled his energies, and his dynasty’s fortunes, into flamboyant pet-projects which included Neuschwanstein.

Nowadays, the 1.2 million annual visitors who tramp up to the castle cause problems that King Ludwig could never have imaged. One major headache was subsidence due to the vibrations of motor vehicles and tourists’ footsteps, which necessitated laying steel-supports deep into the bedrock.

However, the recent scaffolding has been used to address an altogether more cosmetic issue. Neuschwanstein was originally coated in an attractive limestone, chosen by King Ludwig for aesthetic affect. Despite its photogenic quality, there was one big problem with the limestone: it eroded badly in the winter snow. As a result, it has been a three-and-a-bit year project to re-clad and resurface the exterior and return it to its former glory.

The best news for tourists is that the exterior of the castle looks as perfect as King Ludwig could ever have dreamed. The bad news, though, is for the Bavarian Palace Authority – the maintenance tasks are never-ending, and their next project will be re-enforcing some of the internal walls. There’s a lot of work in preserving a fairytale.

Edd Morris is author of Neuschwanstein Castle: An Exploring Castles Travel Guide.

For a long time, Germany has been a country of innovations. Progess and technology ‘Made in Germany’ made a worldwide statement of quality and innovation. However, something has changed the German attitude towards technology. People have begun to question, to criticise and most importantly to generally reject it. Maybe because new developments increasingly happened in the software and not hardware segments, i.e. innovation increasingly concerned things that make life easier and more convenient but are non-tangible.

Add to this a phenomenon we’ve known for a long time – envy. Everything that is not coming from myself needs to be rejected, at least partly. Otherwise, this would mean that someone else is better than I. And there’s also ‘the effect of the big unknown’. Gigantic corporations from the USA whose leaders are not really known. Companies such as Google.

Hence and not surprisingly the summer of 2008 saw quite a heated discussion in Germany about Google’s Street View project: “How can it be that some Americans drive through our streets with their photo cars and spy on us! There are laws to protect our privacy, our belongings and anyway.” Yes, anyway.

Fact is that Germans had already discovered other nations via Street View before the service went live in Germany. And they had done that more than anyone else worldwide. So, looking at others is allowed and has its advantages. However, if my own house wall happens to be seen by someone, that’s different. Because this is attacking my private sphere.

The irony of all this is that hardly anyone is aware of the fact that Street View was partly planned in Google Germany’s Munich development centre. But maybe no-one wanted to hear that, since things were not like they used to be anymore, ie no more small inventor who makes a discovery in his workshop that helps everyone and that everyone can be proud of. In this case, it’s a faceless company. And many cannot understand what they do and how and why they do it.

Without the internet the debate would probably have gone against Google. However, big parts of the digital community were in favour of Street View and its advantages. The community of Oberstaufen in the Bavarian Allgäu region, for example, realised those advantages early on. This small tourist destination had jumped on the Social Media bandwagon early on and knew about its opportunities. When the Street View discussion was at its height, they used it for a clever PR stunt: they symbolically invited Google with a big cake saying ‘Google StreetView – Welcome in Oberstaufen’ written on top. The digital community loved it, and everyone talked about Oberstaufen in Germany as part of the Street View discussion.

Google liked this display of ‘Bavarian charm’ as well and on 2 November 2010 Oberstaufen was the first German town to be put live on Google Street View, before Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and 17 other big cities. And on that day, Google actually showed its face in Germany: the company’s German spokesperson and its German head of development put themselves in front of the camera for interviews and answered questions from the population in Oberstaufen, just like normal people. They even honoured the occasion in Lederhosen.

More than a year later the situation in Germany has only marginally changed. Oberstaufen and Germany’s 20 biggest cities are on Street View, no more, no less. The service is tolerated but not expanded. And it’s probably only being tolerated since house owners can object to their property being on Street View. Their pixelated houses look a bit as if parts of Germany had been bombed. The American journalist Jeff Jarvis even said that via Street View Germany looked like it did shortly after World War II.

I wouldn’t go that far. However, I’d hope in these digital times that in future Germany will once again promote and support the spirit of ideas and development that has always been a part of the Made in Germany brand.

While on my flight back to Europe from Borneo/Malaysia this September, I was rummaging round the in-flight entertainment system and came across a mini travel guide for Germany, edited by Rough Guides. The German locations that the authors recommended as insider tips particularly worth visiting were Bamberg and Würzburg, two towns in the Bavarian region of Franconia which is my Heimat and where I come from.

I was born in Ebermannstadt which is located in the triangle formed by the towns of Nuremberg, Bamberg and Bayreuth, the so-called Fränkische Schweiz (Franconian Switzerland). This is where I grew up, in a playful, romantic landscape, characterised by valleys deeply carved into the Jurassic rock, and scarce plateaus 500 metres above sea level.

People associate Bavaria with the Oktoberfest, white sausages and politicians who think of themselves as being the best, and for whom it’s not unusual to be labelled as Großkopferte (big headed ones). Even if Franconia is indeed located in Bavaria, Franconians are actually not too happy about this association. They’d like to be independent, and at least emotionally and mentally they are. People are very much down-to-earth here, understatement is a character trait, and whoever lumps Franconia together with the entire federal state of Bavaria is likely to get a gruff remark in return. If you want to insult a Franconian, simply call him Bavarian. Admittedly, there’s a bit of a minority complex at play.

Although there’s hardly a region in Germany with more castles and ruins on such a small surface. Potato fields, grain fields, and forests dominate the landscape. It is not only my home but also that of potato dumplings that are even being fed to toddlers, therefore starting a life-long love affair with this specific dish. During my prolonged stays in various corners of this world as a travel writer and publisher of travel guides I have occasionally been overcome by a culinary ‘missionary spirit’, grabbing a grater and potato tubers in order to dish up some proper potato dumplings to my local friends.

Unfortunately, each time my enthusiasm has been disappointed: they don’t seem to like Kartoffelklöße, the Franconian’s beloved potato dumpling, in other parts of the world. With one exception; Maria, the Spanish wife of a good friend of mine, who has taken to them. But she’s also come to terms with other German customs and now lives in Düsseldorf!

If you want to give the Kartoffelklöße a try (and have someone to help you with German recipes), Michael Müller’s ‘Gscheitgut’ is a new Franconian cooking book and cultural guide. His ‘Fränkische Schweiz’ (Franconian Switzerland, also German only) was – when published more than 25 years ago – one of the first German travel guides dedicated to an individual German region.

This festive season, one of the seasonal movies doing good business across the pond is Ira Finkelstein’s Christmas, the story of a Jewish boy’s desperate attempts to enjoy a ‘proper’ Christmas, even if he has to give his family the slip to do so. I mention this, because the film’s location ‘Christmastown’ happens to be a town in Washington State called Leavenworth, which has made its career out of passing itself off as an ersatz Bavaria.

There’s an undeniably large German-origin population in the United States – you’ve only got to look in the phone book to see all the names – and many communities have German bakeries and celebrate Oktoberfest, but Leavenworth has gone a whole lot further, and really tried to recreate itself as a little slice of Germany. At this time of year that means, of course, a Christmas market (Christkindlmarkt), and a child’s lantern parade, plus lots of pretty decorations and plenty of US-style smiley hospitality.

Of course you don’t have to be here at Christmas time to have the Leavenworth experience: King Ludwig’s restaurant serves ‘pork hock’ (Schweinshaxe) and the Café Verona does strudel, German beer flows freely, there’s oompah bands, red cabbage and pretzels galore. The Munchen House and the Leavenworth Sausage Garten do good business, as does the Obertal Inn and the half-timbered Edelweiss Hotel. You can completely immerse yourself in things Bavarian.

In fact Leavenworth’s story is not really about German settlement at all, but a good case history of American gumption.  Back in the 1960s it was a remote timber town, dying on its feet. In a desperate attempt ‘to turn their precarious situation around, the leaders of the community decided to change Leavenworth’s appearance, hoping to bring tourism into the area. Using the beautiful backdrop of the surrounding Alpine hills to their advantage, the townspeople agreed to remodel their hamlet into a Bavarian-style village’, according to the town’s website.

And besides the physical transformation, they started to organise a series of festivals, such as the Autumn Leaf Festival, Maifest and the extremely popular Christmas Lighting Ceremony. Eventually, all these initiatives paid off, and today more than a million tourists come to Leavenworth each year, with this year’s filming of Ira Finkelstein’s Christmas a final feather in their cap.

Alas, that movie hasn’t made it across the pond; the storyline is too American-specific, but then so is Leavenworth. We don’t need a recreation-destination when we can have the real thing, for a fraction of the price, just a short-haul flight away. As we say in the UK, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Leavenworth, and Ira Finkelstein, come as a welcome reminder that something we have on our doorstep is worth leaving home to see.

GermanyisWunderbar has plenty of pages about Bavaria, including Chiemgau, the Black Forest, King Ludwig’s castles, and more. See our ‘South’ section.